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Friday, November 11, 2011

Breckenridge Batiks In Progress by Colorado Artist Martha Kisling

Here are all the watercolor batiks I am working on at the Tin Shop in Breckenridge, CO. Once the wax has melted I figure I should take advantage of it and work on several batiks at once. Then I turn off the wax and paint on all of them so they can sit and dry before the next wax application.

I thought I would show the steps I go through with my watercolor batiks. First, I ink in the drawing on rice paper using a thin, waterproof pen. Then I apply the melted wax to anything I want to stay white - just like using masking fluid. Even though the daisy petals are white I wanted a little color on them first so I just spattered a little wax her and there for the whites.

After using watercolor for some shading on the flowers I applied wax to all of the petals to protect them from further applications of paint. The watercolor tends to run outside of the ink lines on the rice paper so to keep a sharp edge you must apply wax. Now that the petals are protected I can paint the leaves right next to the flowers.

I applied wax to the stems and leaves and then painted the entire background. At this point you don't have to be careful, you can paint right over the flowers because they are protected with wax.

The last step is to paint the melted wax all over the backgound and then wad up the entire painting - the scary part - to crack the wax. Then you smooth it out and paint a dark color over the entire piece - this will settle in the cracks to give that authentic 'batik look'. As you can see below, it looks like a mess - at this point you just have to trust the process.

Using newspaper you iron off all of the wax and you are done. It is always a surprise to see the beautiful and unique end result of this process - enjoy!

I loved seeing the step by step... thank you thank you thank you for sharing that... I am going to have a go at this though I am sure it will take a long time to get to your level of mastery... your work is inspiring and beautiful xx